The degree of cross-party voting has gone way down. As one indicator of this: from 1972-1980, the correlation between the Democratic share of the House vote and Presidential vote was only .54. In other words not very tight, indicating a lot of ticket splitting. By 1982-1990, the correlation had increased to .65 and by 2018 it had soared to .97, indicating almost no ticket splitting.
Access to media is increasingly selected to support one’s current views. For example, self-identified conservative Republicans say they get 47% of their news from FOX; liberal Democrats have a greater variety of sources, but they line up with their ideological bent to CNN, MSNBC, NY Times and NPR.
While not specifically cited in Klein's book, but of greatest importance as far as I am concerned,
several key policy issues have morphed from policy differences to absolute moral judgments. These are inherently more irreconcilable. The most important are race relations, immigration, women’s rights (abortion) and gun control.
several key policy issues have morphed from policy differences to absolute moral judgments. These are inherently more irreconcilable. The most important are race relations, immigration, women’s rights (abortion) and gun control.
Gerrymandering has resulted in districts intentionally being drawn to ensure an easy win for one party or the other. In recent years this has tended to favor Republicans, but both parties have participated. As a result, many if not most primary elections determine the outcome of the General Election designed to favor one party. As a result, primaries in which a relatively small number of voters show up (averagely 30%) bring out the most-intense voters. That’s pushing candidates in both parties further to the right or to the left.
At the same time, the number of truly independent voters has plummeted in recent elections, going from, in analyst's Matthew Dowd's calculations, about 22% to 7%. A result of this is that candidates are putting more of their effort against getting out their base and pummeling the other side rather than persuading a small number of undecideds.
Composition of the parties by race has changed dramatically. In 1952, 6% of Democrats and 2% of Republicans were self-identified as non-white. By 2012, those numbers changed to 43% Democrats and only 9% Republicans self-identifying as non-whites.
Attitudes toward the importance of racial discrimination, not surprisingly, varied correspondingly. In 1994, 39% of Democrats and 26% of Republicans said that discrimination was the main reason "black people can't get ahead these days.” By 2017, 64% of Democrats believed that, but only 14% of Republicans. To note, much of this trend has been driven by white liberals who, one research study shows, have moved further left on this issue than the typical black voter.
No statistic more clearly documents the increased polarization of the two parties than this one. In 1960, 5% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats indicated they would be concerned about their child marrying a person of another party. By 2010, 49% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats said they would be concerned if their child was to marry a person of the other party.
As Klein indicates, he is a lot better at analyzing the reality of the polarization and its causes than what to do to narrow it. Some of his suggestions are sound conceptually but impractical, e.g., eliminate the Electoral College. The actions I believe are most practical are:
1. End gerrymandering. Construct districts which have intentionally a good balance of Republican and Democratic voters.
2. Run open primaries; that is, allow people from either party to choose to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary. That will presumably result in candidates who have paid attention the views of the other party.
3. Make access to voting easily available to all. Make voter registration automatic as one gets their driver’s license, for example.
4. Personally, learn the full stories from individuals who have a different policy point of view than we do. A striking example for me was gun control regulation. A blog I wrote on this, advocating universal background checks and banning of automatic weapons, drew a sharp response from a number of people. I invited them to have breakfast with me to discuss the issue. Two people did. One breakfast proved particularly productive. Why? We came to understand each other’s stories and what led us to our current beliefs, on gun control and other matters. We came away finding we agreed on much more than I expected. I learned some things about the challenge of legislation on automatic weapons. My friend, I hope, learned something from me. We don’t spend enough time understanding each other’s stories when it comes to genuine policy disagreements.
5. Recognize the hole we have dug ourselves into. Sharing this knowledge broadly will hopefully result in more voters selecting candidates of their party who can work across the aisle.
Why would they do this? Because they have come to recognize that this is the only way we’re going to get effective legislation on the key issues in front of us accomplished. The failure in the last several years to achieve sensible gun control or immigration legislation shows the sad outcome of being so polarized.
WhyWe’rePolarized021220
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